below zero movie reviews

Cast & crew

User reviews

The wheels on the bus...

Pjtaylor-96-138044
Mar 6, 2021

Better than expected.

free_uygHurs
Jan 28, 2021

Great movie? No. Wasted time? No

kostaspyxaras-95425

A satisfying thriller

DogePelis2015
Apr 10, 2021

Spanish Con Air

danielcereto

Moderately Surprised By This one...

wandernn1-81-683274
Apr 16, 2021

Spanish thriller

yusufpiskin
Feb 6, 2021
simonoudeluttikhuis

For families, we often take extra miles, and it feels rational as well even when it's not

ridi-arahan
Mar 13, 2021

Nonsensical action story not worth watching

Jan 30, 2021

This is Spain not Wildwest America

epic_nerull
Feb 12, 2021

I found it to be ok

imdb-ikysmoviedatabase

confusing, terribly bad plot

Feb 1, 2021
Jan 29, 2021

Solid smart entertainment

ienjoyent3rtainmnt
Jun 26, 2021

Boredom in the ice

Feb 3, 2021

Sense of justice saves this Assault on Precinct 13 (sort of) revisit

samuelregueira

Not bad, good time killer

Nyc_Don_DrKing

Worth watching

otnememento-2
hulix-459-652146

Claustrophobic tense, I enjoyed it.

Frustrating, decent spanish movie.

Feb 15, 2021

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Bajocero Reviews

Gory but fun thriller has strong violence, language, nudity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2021

Below Zero flirts with character depth and shocking brutality, but doesn't go all-in on either. The result is dark, pulpy fun that feels like it should get around to pulling off something truly audacious, but never does.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Not a bad cross-up of "Con Air" and "Assault on Precinct 13" on paper and director Lluís Quillez generates decent atmosphere on a limited budget. But there's also paucity in the script, which builds to disappointing revelations and limp subtext.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 1, 2021

Below Zero builds a strong sense of foreboding from the beginning.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2021

Below Zero occasionally stumbles with its story, but it does a brilliant job of keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 29, 2021

The film's playing the usual mass-market beats on the way to a relatively perfunctory ending designed not to split opinion; there are bumps on the road along the way, but the film more or less gets where it's going without much fuss.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 29, 2021

Led by a talented batch of actors. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 28, 2021

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Common Sense Media Review

Gory but fun thriller has strong violence, language, nudity.

Parents Need to Know

Why Age 17+?

Men get punched, kicked, slapped, beaten, bludgeoned, stabbed, and shot. A man h

Full-frontal nudity of a man's not-erect penis. Shirtless men in a locker room.

Strong language includes "f--k," "f--king," "s--t," "bitch," "a--hole," "hell,"

Some adults smoke cigarettes.

Any Positive Content?

Martin and prisoners show great determination, perseverance, and teamwork gettin

Martin is a good cop and follows the rules. He stands up against further police

Parents need to know that Below Zero is a Spanish thriller about a National Police Corps officer in Spain who must transport a large vehicle moving 6 dangerous inmates to another prison in the dead of night. The film has fun playing with different genres and their conventions and expectations, and there's plenty of fun, tension, thrills, mystery, and violence. Expect a fair amount of gore, death, guns, gunshot wounds, bloody and beaten faces, stabbing, body parts blown off or bashed in, car chases and crashes, drownings, impalement, and a man burning to death. There's also a very-hard-to-listen-to description of the rape, abuse, mutilation, and murder of a 13-year-old girl at the end of the film. Strong language throughout includes "f--k," "f--king," "s--t," "bitch," "a--hole," "hell," "pr--ks," and "d--k." Full-frontal nudity of a man's not-erect penis. Smoking.

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Violence & Scariness

Men get punched, kicked, slapped, beaten, bludgeoned, stabbed, and shot. A man hits another man in the head with a shovel and buries him alive. The same man shoots police officers, killing them, while torturing others for information. Faces are bloodied, cut, and bruised. Some prisoners are made to strip, one having to bend over and cough. Police threaten beatings. An older man burns to death in a cell. Another gets stabbed in the hand with a shard of glass. Car crashes, drownings, freezings, bullet wounds, and talk of slitting throats and murder. One man gets his head gruesomely bashed in with the bottom of a fire extinguisher. Another man gets his hand blown off by a shotgun. A very disturbing description of all the suffering one man's 13-year-old daughter went through before being murdered, including multiple rapes, torture, abuse, drugging, and mention of objects like pliers, bottles, and cigarette butts.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Full-frontal nudity of a man's not-erect penis. Shirtless men in a locker room. A few romantic kisses.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Strong language includes "f--k," "f--king," "s--t," "bitch," "a--hole," "hell," "pr--ks," and "d--k."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Martin and prisoners show great determination, perseverance, and teamwork getting out of tricky situations.

Positive Role Models

Martin is a good cop and follows the rules. He stands up against further police brutality from his police partner. Ramis and some of the other prisoners show trust, friendship, and teamwork. No diversity.

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Parent and Kid Reviews

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What's the Story?

In BELOW ZERO, police officer Martin (Javier Gutierrez) starts his first day in a new precinct. His first assignment pairs him with an aggressive partner, and they must drive a large prisoner transport van with a small number of inmates to another prison. The problem is they must leave during the dead of night, and it's very, very cold outside. There also seems to be someone after the transport van. Are they friend, foe, both, or neither? Who can Martin trust?

Is It Any Good?

There's lots of fun to be had in this violent thriller that twists and turns its way through different genres like suspense, mystery, survival, and horror. Below Zero somehow works either despite all the mashing up of genres or because of it. For instance, the film might first begin with a nod to horror, but then firmly establish a mystery, only to then move into psychological thriller territory, then back for more horror, then transition to a survival kind of thing, then jump back to a reminder of the core mystery, then to a hunter-hunted kind of thing, then back to survival, and so on, before final revelations. This might be the subtle genius of the film, this deft handling of the above and all in one, clear voice and tone.

While the film unfortunately lacks any representation outside of all the light-skinned Spanish men in this film, the acting is gripping, textured, and easy to slip into watching. Gutierrez's Martin is solidly determined to hold onto his humanity while trying to manage a group of prisoners. And Callejo's Ramis takes over every scene he's in and becomes another kind of heart of the film by the end. Further, each character is thoughtfully sketched out and given bits of background and history that are scattered throughout the banter and dialogue. Alliances are shaped and crossed, expectations of characters are toyed with and thwarted, and Martin can never quite fully know who he can trust. The violence and gore could be a turnoff for some, however, as it comes suddenly and brutally, sometimes without warning.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how the violence in Below Zero . Do you think the film could have been as effective as a thriller without the violence? How so? Was any of the violence too much?

Do you think the portrayal of the prisoners was well done? What did you like most about the group or cast? What did you like least? In comparison with the police officers in the film, how do the inmates fare? Did you feel their respective representations were realistic? Why or why not?

Would you have done anything differently in any of the situations presented in the movie? In which situations, and what would you have done differently?

Do you think "justice was served," by the end of the film? Why or why not?

Discuss the mashup of genres in the movie. Do you think this helps or hurts the delivery of the story?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : January 29, 2021
Cast : Javier Gutiérrez , Karra Elejalde , Luis Callejo , Andres Gertrudix
Director : Lluis Quilez
Studio : Netflix
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 106 minutes
MPAA rating : NR
Last updated : February 17, 2023

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Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

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